Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to expand the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the discovery of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the world's sky: windows that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these portals as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and revert to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
